The Point is Ownership

I was relieved when I learned that all of you wouldn't be able to watch that worthless QC show because W felt like giving a press conference.

Overall, I think he had some good things to say on social security, but he needs to stop talking about long-term solvency (people don't care about what's gonna happen 45 years down the road) and instead focus on OWNERSHIP. Americans should be able to keep the money they earn and invest it how they want to. Individuals are empowered when they are freed them from dependence on government handouts and are then made owners instead. They become in control of their own lives and destinies and of their own retirement.

That having been said, it's Thursday night in Athens, and I'm about to go "own" a 2 dollar Guinness at the Winery by myself.

Something new

In an effort to have an image that is more palatable to the eyes, I've placed this picture of my future wife. Ann Coulter may be more than ten years older than me, but we can make it work. Sorry Ryan "The Relativist" Smith, there's no sardonic atheist pun about the legitimacy of the Pope's right to succeed St. Peter as the head of God's Church.

Right now, Ann is a little shy about becoming a fellow blogger here on BMBS. But with my dashing personality, anything could happen.

Pope Palpatine

Don't think they look alike?
"Search your feelings. You know it to be true."

There are some advantages to being the only non-Catholic BMBS blogger.

Happy Earth Day...

...and why the tree-hugging hippies should be thanking capitalism for the environmental progress of the past 50 years.

What losers!

As I was walking into my apartment yesterday after an arduous three and a half hour class, Joe S. Fratdude (my neighbor) was smoking a cigarette while leaning on his red clay smothered Tahoe. I nod to him in normal respect, and with his lower lip flapping in the wind while precariously balancing a "fag", he turns his head away. I walk in the apartment with disgust.

Moments later as I am tying my shoes for the first run that I've had in weeks, I hear what seems to be a nice black lady outside my window. For the time that I have spent at Talmadge Close, that type of noise is unusual. So I peak out the window to see what is going on.

The lady has a mop and bucket in the right hand, and a vacuum cleaner in the left. Just then, Joe S. Fratdude walks out with a personal check in hand.

Joe says "Thanks again for coming this week. I don't know what we would do without you. I mean, like, the place looks great. The kitchen is spotless. So you're coming back next Wednesday right? I'm looking forward to seeing you again."

The lady puts her cleaning supplies into her car and rides off into the sunset.

Yes my friends, the kids next door have a weekly maid. How irresponsible, lazy, spoiled, wasteful, and loathsome does one have to be that earns them the need to hire a domestic employee while in college? These jerks really have nothing left to look forward in life except to buy some more "blow" for the next Texas Holdem' Tournament held every Tuesday.

I know I should not care what my good-for- nothing neighbors are up to, but this scene upset me tremendously. I posted this as a request from someone that was more in disgust than I.

Thoughts and Feelings?

This Just In...

We continue to hear unconfirmed reports from various sources that Coach Munch is leaving BC for a coaching job at Effingham. If this is true, the Benedictine community will certainly lose a "superfantastic" coach, teacher, and mentor.

We'll keep you posted with the latest...

Pope Benedict XVI

This guy is awesome. Not only does he have the namesake of the patron saint of BC, he's going to bring down the conservative hammer on all those liberals in our church. The hand holders during the Our Father better listen up. Benedict is not going to let our 2000 year old establishment fall into the depths of "progressiveness" that the Episcopalian Church has lost itself in. I believe he is correct in warning against the "Dictatorship of Relativism." If we began to mold our church teachings to fit whatever culture norms we have today, than the Church would mold itself out of existence. Benedict is the hard ass needed to prevent this catastrophe from happening. He is even willing to lose a few members to the "progressive ideals" in order to preserve the Orthodoxy that the Church has developed and argued for nearly 2000 years. I found this quote of him this morning when Benedict was then Cardinal Ratzinger.

"The Church will become small, and will to a great extent have to start over again. But after a time of testing, an internalized and simplified Church will radiate great power and influence; for the population of an entirely planned and controlled world are going to be inexpressibly lonely and they will then discover the little community of believers as something quite new. As a hope that is there for them, as they answer they have secretly always been asking for."

Bring it on hippie Catholics. Either take it or leave it... But I am asking you to please leave it. A mass liberal exodus would allow the Roman Catholic Church to last for at least another 2000 years.

When In Rome...

For all you Internet gambling junkies out there, myself included, you can now wager on the next Pope. Vatican insiders say to look for an older candidate, likely Italian, with the same conservative views as John Paul, II to keep the seat warm during this transitional papacy.

In a similar attempt to profit from the Papal conclave, I have designed a 3-bar hat to commemorate this sacred ritual.

Why We Need the Ownership Society

Two great websites that all of you should go to and read (even though I know none of you will) on why Congress should allow workers to opt out of the regular social security system and create their own personal private accounts:

http://www.socialsecurity.org/

http://www.heritage.org/research/features
/socialsecurity/OWCWelcome_new.asp

And also, a third great article that sums up all of this stuff:

http://www.cato.org/special/ownership_society/boaz.html

I know everyone would much rather watch The AC or whatever, but trust me, this is important. I know you are all thinking jeez, this guy needs to get a girlfriend or something. Well you're probably right. Trouble is, whenever I do get one, which may not be until 2040, I won't be able to take her out on that first date because there won't be any Social Security left.

Super-Size Me

Earlier today, Stephen and I had the priviledge of dining at Hardee's, a fine establishment if I may say. Below are a few pictures from our documentary.



Here's Stephen enjoying a Six Dollar Burger (which, obviously, is not really 6 dollars or else he wouldn't have gotten it).



I strongly recommend the new Frisco Thickburger, both pictured below.





Oh, and also, Colonel Owens and the entire BC English Department (minus Curley and Calandra) were there. They all say hi.

Death of the Death Tax?

Earlier today, the House of Representatives voted, by a substantial margin, to repeal the estate tax permanantly (the 2001 tax cut temporarily repealed until it sunsets in 2010).

Hopefully the Senate will follow the House's lead, but this is not likely (thanks Arlen Specter and John McCain). What will probably happen is the tax rate will be lowered to 15%, which is not a bad deal, but we still could do better.

Many libs say it makes no sense to cut taxes any further, because we're running huge deficits right now. But Ronald Reagan said it best in his first televised speech as President in 1981:

There were always those who told us that taxes couldn’t be cut until spending was reduced. Well, you know we can lecture our children about extravagance until we run out of voice and breath. Or we can cut their extravagance by simply reducing their allowance...

The answer to a government that's too big is to stop feeding its growth. Government spending has been growing faster than the economy itself. The massive national debt which we accumulated is the result of the government's high spending diet. Well, it's time to change the diet and to change it in the right way.

That's right. Cutting taxes "starves the beast" and gives the government less of our money to play with. Simple as that.

The fact of the matter is, the creation of wealth should only be taxed once. The super-rich manage to avoid paying this tax anyway, because of people like Stephen Leonard who will be paid to find loopholes in the code.

I think the code should be simplified, once and for all, with a national sales tax. And if that puts Stephen out of a job, so be it. He will still be a cheap asshole either way you look at it.

Happy April 15th everyone.

April 15th

I'm too lazy to create another April 15th advisory post, so here's last years with some minor modifications.

Yes my friends, it is true that everyone's 1040s are due to the IRS by the end of this week, April 15th. I suggest filing before the end of Friday, April 14th. You know how government workers are (Like Ryan.) I doubt the s.o.bs will be working this Saturday.

If you haven't done so already, I'm sure your mothers have filed your income tax return to the Federal Government. After she is done forging your name and paying your apartment's rent, thank her dearly. Concerning income levels such as ours, it is a shame to make you mothers perform this petty task. Of course if you want to pay me to file your return, that is a different story.

I just wanted to give a heads up to those men that wait until this last minute with the philosophy that if you do wait until those last 60 seconds to complete the job, than the job will only take 60 seconds to complete. I honor you, Godspeed.

Most of us are college students or have just recently graduated from a post secondary school, so I suggest that you find Form 1099 mailed to you from whomever your school loans originated. There will be an amount listed of the student loan interest paid by you. Make sure to include this as an "above the line" deduction in the 1040. There are no phase outs associated with this expense (Ryan, this is a huge benefit.) If you are still currently in school, list the tuition expenses you've experienced in 2004. If these are greater than grants and scholarships received, than a deduction will be allowed for the difference. (Ryan, A deduction does not lower one's taxes dollar for dollar, it lowers your Taxable Income, which is used to calculate your Tax . Assuming a 30% Tax Rate, a $1 deduction will result in $0.30 reduction in taxes for the year.)

For people like you and myself, this is the best advice I can give. Go to www.irs.gov for any other questions you might have.

If There's Grass On the Field...

You know how the old saying goes. Well, last weekend, one of our near and dear friends applied this philosophy by making out with a sixteen year-old. To protect his identity, I will call him Snuffy P. Smith. Snuffy will turn 23 in June. Now I am no math whiz, but that is an age difference of nearly seven years.

In Snuffy's defense, the girl told him that she was seventeen. One must draw the line somewhere. And while robbing the cradle carries no sentence, the repercussions for statutory rape are very real and very grave.

It's On

I have just received an application for the Beach Bum Parade. The entry fee is $35. We need to come up with some ideas for our "float." I think a truck and a flat-bed trailer would suffice. Let me know what ya'll think.

2005 World Series Champions

Though our Atlanta Braves smooched a fat bone on Opening Day, there is no reason to doubt our imminent success this season. Except maybe for these new uniform changes.

This is the new hat and jersey that the Braves will be wearing for the 13 Sunday home games this year. First time changing the uniform since 1987.


The hat isn't as bad as I thought it would be. It's essentially the same as the spring training/batting practice one, but it's better because it's not that ugly mesh like the other ones.


The jersey I'm not a fan of. Do we really need another red after the Cardinals, Phillies, Red Sox, Nationals, Reds, etc.? It reminds me of Kool Aid. The red tomahawk against the red jersey is the main mistake here. But I'm not gonna forget to wipe because of it; no big deal.

Acquisitions and Mergers

For all those interesting in capitalism, here's an update. Yesterday in my Acquisitions and Mergers class, we had a guest speaker... Dr. Beresford. This guy makes tons of money... he does a lot of accounting research that doesn't make sense, he teaches several classes in the J.M. Tull school of Accounting, he's on the Board of Directors for MCI/Worldcom, two other public companies, a retired partner of Ernst & Young, and owns a gazillion shares in his companies plus God knows what.
He gave us a talk on what life is like as a Board of Director (Ryan, Board of Directors are guys who are elected by shareholders. Their job is to hire and fire the company managers, and to oversee anything that deals with the public, i.e. Dividend Declarations, Bond issuance, and now recently because of Enron- overseeing audits of the financial statements. )
Anyways, it was very timely that Dr. Beresford came to talk to us. As you can read from Fox News , MCI/Worldcom is in the middle of an acquisitions battle between Qwest (a shitty communications company out west) and Verizon (a vibrant communications company based out of the Northeast.) where MCI is to be the acquired company. Dr. Beresford gave us the inside scope on this transaction at 3:00 yesterday, 3 hours before his conference call that would decide the fate of who the acquiring company would be... Qwest or Verizon.
I thought it was interesting how these negotiations were taking place. Qwest, in the past 2 months of the negotiations, had formally contacted MCI's board of directors only once through the whole process, while Verizon stayed in personal contact with all those at MCI on a daily basis. Qwest decided not to negotiate formally, but rather to use the press as the mediator. Qwest used means reminiscent of a 4th grader, using name calling and threats behind the teacher's back to bully it's way to the table. The only time that Dr. Beresford heard from Qwest's CEO was a week ago. After a 20 minute conference call with the CEO, where all the other Board of Directors also participated, they spent another hour by themselves trying to decipher what the CEO was trying to say. They decided that the CEO of Qwest was retarded.
On top of this preocrial style of business, Qwest desires to buy out MCI for a price that is two times more than their own net worth (Ryan, that does not make sense.) Verizon's purchase price represents only a fraction of their own net worth. Qwest's CEO also told Dr. Beresford and others that the regulatory process would be much faster by taking their bid. That produced hysterical laughs from MCI's Board of Directors... there's nothing legally different between being acquired by Qwest or Verizon. Needless to say, MCI has chosen Verizon's bid for the acquisition. After MCI's accounting scandal a couple of years back (where 100 billion dollars of financial misstatements where discovered), they were not about to take a chance with a company that sounds like a retarded step child.
I thought some of you might think that was interesting of how these multi billion dollar transactions take place. It's not much different than kids trading candy at recess.

Still Alive

Thanks Will. You remain the true "feeding tube" for this blog. I was about to pull the plug with a final post, saying R.I.P. Terry Schiavo, Pope John Paul, and Beach Music and Boat Shoes, but thankfully, after 25 days without food or water, you intervened.

Also, two good articles I came across this week that are good to compare and contrast. The first is a 1975 interview with Reagan, in which he so articulately spells out his conservative vision; the second is about why people like me continue to question the present-day status of these same conservative ideals thirty years later in a Republican Party that cares more about winning elections and legislating morals than it does about cutting taxes.

Post St. Patrick's Day Thoughts

There has been very little activity on the BMBS blog since we let out for spring break so I thought I would throw some stuff out there.

I've decided that God is begging us to get the Irish Hurricanes up and running. Think about it. Two years ago, it rained for the first time in 2o years. This year marked the coldest Parade on record. These signs cannot be ignored. I've started spreading the word in Statesboro that we are currently accepting applications.

I have still not heard back from Conan or his people about being our innaugural guest speaker.

I am working on getting an application for the Beach Bum Parade. I think this would be a great opportunity to get some publicity for the Irish Hurricanes and our cause.

I just finished watching the entire first season of Arrested Development on DVD. Do yourself a favor and check it out. It is the next Seinfeld. And don't listen to any comments Ryan makes about this statement.